...fuck this shit, i'm moving to fiji.
***BEWAREEEE, POLITICAL RANT AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION***
Oh dear, are we in trouble now: US Government Bails Out AIG
So Wall Street is crumbling, as is our economy and quite possibly our lives. Dow Jones dropped 450 points today. Yikes.
I have some things to say in regards to the current economic meltdown going on in the US right now. It is the government's fault - more so the executive branch's fault. I hate pointing fingers, but come on, someone's gotta pay for this, and I refuse to take the blame. You can't spend money out the wazoo on random things (ie. military/Iraq) without the money to pay for it, which is usually generated from taxes (except G. Dub is pretty much anti-taxes). I'm 100% positive that the American people would rather pay higher taxes than to have ridiculous amounts of their money lost in the midst of this economic crisis. What triggered the Great Depression? Two things: overextension of credit and the exceedingly high budget deficit. What triggered this current meltdown? Overextension of credit (funding things like the war in Iraq and aiding Israel in its never ending quest Palestine, etc) and the exceedingly high budget deficit (in addition to pumping billions of dollars into the war, the government gave away free money in rebate checks earlier this year in hopes of stimulating the economy. Hey, we all love free money, right? WRONG. Where the hell did they get this money? Borrowed it, thereby increasing our deficit and overextending our credit even further and screwing us all over for life).
...Great Depression, Round 2? I hope not. And if it is, G. Dub will have hell to pay, and I'm sure the rest of the country would back me up on this one.
Don't get me wrong, I hate taxes as much as the next person. I hate losing sixty or seventy or eighty dollars of my hard earned paychecks. But I'd rather pay those than to lose all my bank savings. So thank you, G. Dub, for possibly ruining what chance I might have had at paying for graduate school and thereby possibly screwing over my life.
So let's go over a couple of things, shall we?
1.) Republicans are, for the most part, anti-taxes and anti-government spending. For the last six or so years, George W. Bush has been pretty pro-government spending in order to fund things like the war, etc. Yayyyy, spending! But wait! He refuses to raise taxes and even decreased a few. Taxes = Government's allowance money. No taxes = deficit out the wazoo. Deficit = borrowing. Borrowing (without having any way to pay the money back) = overextension of credit. Deficit + overextension of credit = The United States, as we know it, is fucked hardcore style.
It's common sense. You cannot spend money you don't have. My mother taught me this in the freaking first grade. If I didn't have money for the cookie I wanted at lunch, I had three options: a.) not buy it and go without it for the day b.) borrow money from my best friend c.) steal the money from my mother's pockets. My friends, the government has basically chosen the last option. They're taking our money to pay for their mistakes and lack of common sense.
Someone ought to scold Barbara Bush for not teaching her son this simple yet valuable lesson before taking on the task of being president. It's an easy concept that even his sometimes non-functional brain can grasp.
2.) Republicans also tend to be anti-government/anything that might slightly resemble socialism. In their haste to get away from government-control, they kind of overlooked one tiny thing: the people. They were too busy not interfering with the people's everyday life that things got out of control. For the last four or so months, a lot of economists have been denying that we were in a recession, despite the ridiculous increase in gas prices, the failure of the housing market, the shrinking job pool, etc. Rising unemployment + decreasing dollar + falling GDP screams, "RECESSION, OMGZ!" But no, they refused to believe it. When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - the two biggest companies that basically controlled the housing market - were bailed out by the government, they still semi-denied it, but acknowledged that the failure of the housing market could be troublesome. And today, the government had to bail out the insurance ompany, AIG. AIG is the largest insurance company in our country. They insure half the banks that people use - for example, Wachovia, which I have. Who's going to fund Wachovia if AIG is in shambles? The government, apparently, since they bought AIG to save its sorry ass. So basically the Republicans' fear of too much government involvement in life has come true because they used too little government in the beginning. The government is now in control of over 70% of the big corporations in the United States. Hmm, sounds a lot like socialism to me. And yet again we have our lovely President George Dubbya to thank for it.
Newsflash, G. Dub: I would have moved to Switzerland if I wanted THIS much socialism in my life. But thanks for forcing it upon us due to your lack of presidential ability! I appreciate it.
And it sucks because I defended this slip of a president once upon a time. "Oh, he's had a rough presidency...9/11 was pretty unfortunate" and "He's doing the best he can with the current circumstances" and "...well, at least he's not John Kerry!" But honestly? I feel like sometime in 2005 or 2006 G. Dub just lost his focus and stopped caring about the majority of Americans' interests. It seems to me like he forgot that this country was founded on the principles of a democracy and pretty much started making decisions for us (ie. military - "Hey, let's go into Iraq and flush out Sadaam Hussein...even though we're looking for Osama bin Laden...but let's use Hussein as a cover-up victory for not knowing where the fuck Osama is, yayyy!"; education - "No Child Left Behind" Act failed hardcore. Goodbye, millions of dollars put into a shitty education campaign...) without really listening to the people and what we wanted. We may not be the best educated country, and we may not know much, but if there's one thing we do know, it's what we want. And I don't really think we wanted eight years of this. Unfortunately we were deceived by all these politicians and we were stuck with two shitty candidate choices for two elections in a row. We thought we were choosing the lesser of two evils both times, but boy, were we wrong and we have been kicking ourselves for the last eight years.
Ummm...so, how many more days until the inauguration of the new president? I almost don't even care who it is anymore. Hell, I'll even take Ralph Nader at this point. Just get G. Dub out before he causes us more trouble. There are so many things he could mess up in the span of three months, and I don't know if this country will ever recover.
*sigh* I just had my Political Theory class and we talked about our dying economy (which is what triggered this entry) and it was quite depressing. There's this super conservative girl, Maria (who I constantly butt heads with during class discussions), that tried to defend the executive decisions made by the Bush administration and I simply could not sit by and watch her spew the same lies that this administration has fed us. What happened to politics being used to help benefit today's society and its citizens? Aristotle must be rolling in his grave, watching this.
So, in conclusion, I have a message, America: learn not only what changes you want to see in this country but also learn which candidate also sees the same vision you see. You decide which candidate is going to be better at turning this train wreck around. I don't know about you but I love this country too much to watch it go down in flames without trying to do anything about it. So please, VOTEEE.
...[/random public service announcement]
***END POLITICAL RANT***
...one day I will post a non-political rant entry and talk about my real personal life, haha. Sorry, it's just that now that Political Science is one of my majors, I actually have to care about these sorts of things and talk about them. Anyway, so much has been going on in my life (outside of politics, that is), more drama, etc. I will get to it eventually, possibly tomorrow. I feel too world weary to really go into it right now.
Oh dear, are we in trouble now: US Government Bails Out AIG
So Wall Street is crumbling, as is our economy and quite possibly our lives. Dow Jones dropped 450 points today. Yikes.
I have some things to say in regards to the current economic meltdown going on in the US right now. It is the government's fault - more so the executive branch's fault. I hate pointing fingers, but come on, someone's gotta pay for this, and I refuse to take the blame. You can't spend money out the wazoo on random things (ie. military/Iraq) without the money to pay for it, which is usually generated from taxes (except G. Dub is pretty much anti-taxes). I'm 100% positive that the American people would rather pay higher taxes than to have ridiculous amounts of their money lost in the midst of this economic crisis. What triggered the Great Depression? Two things: overextension of credit and the exceedingly high budget deficit. What triggered this current meltdown? Overextension of credit (funding things like the war in Iraq and aiding Israel in its never ending quest Palestine, etc) and the exceedingly high budget deficit (in addition to pumping billions of dollars into the war, the government gave away free money in rebate checks earlier this year in hopes of stimulating the economy. Hey, we all love free money, right? WRONG. Where the hell did they get this money? Borrowed it, thereby increasing our deficit and overextending our credit even further and screwing us all over for life).
...Great Depression, Round 2? I hope not. And if it is, G. Dub will have hell to pay, and I'm sure the rest of the country would back me up on this one.
Don't get me wrong, I hate taxes as much as the next person. I hate losing sixty or seventy or eighty dollars of my hard earned paychecks. But I'd rather pay those than to lose all my bank savings. So thank you, G. Dub, for possibly ruining what chance I might have had at paying for graduate school and thereby possibly screwing over my life.
So let's go over a couple of things, shall we?
1.) Republicans are, for the most part, anti-taxes and anti-government spending. For the last six or so years, George W. Bush has been pretty pro-government spending in order to fund things like the war, etc. Yayyyy, spending! But wait! He refuses to raise taxes and even decreased a few. Taxes = Government's allowance money. No taxes = deficit out the wazoo. Deficit = borrowing. Borrowing (without having any way to pay the money back) = overextension of credit. Deficit + overextension of credit = The United States, as we know it, is fucked hardcore style.
It's common sense. You cannot spend money you don't have. My mother taught me this in the freaking first grade. If I didn't have money for the cookie I wanted at lunch, I had three options: a.) not buy it and go without it for the day b.) borrow money from my best friend c.) steal the money from my mother's pockets. My friends, the government has basically chosen the last option. They're taking our money to pay for their mistakes and lack of common sense.
Someone ought to scold Barbara Bush for not teaching her son this simple yet valuable lesson before taking on the task of being president. It's an easy concept that even his sometimes non-functional brain can grasp.
2.) Republicans also tend to be anti-government/anything that might slightly resemble socialism. In their haste to get away from government-control, they kind of overlooked one tiny thing: the people. They were too busy not interfering with the people's everyday life that things got out of control. For the last four or so months, a lot of economists have been denying that we were in a recession, despite the ridiculous increase in gas prices, the failure of the housing market, the shrinking job pool, etc. Rising unemployment + decreasing dollar + falling GDP screams, "RECESSION, OMGZ!" But no, they refused to believe it. When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - the two biggest companies that basically controlled the housing market - were bailed out by the government, they still semi-denied it, but acknowledged that the failure of the housing market could be troublesome. And today, the government had to bail out the insurance ompany, AIG. AIG is the largest insurance company in our country. They insure half the banks that people use - for example, Wachovia, which I have. Who's going to fund Wachovia if AIG is in shambles? The government, apparently, since they bought AIG to save its sorry ass. So basically the Republicans' fear of too much government involvement in life has come true because they used too little government in the beginning. The government is now in control of over 70% of the big corporations in the United States. Hmm, sounds a lot like socialism to me. And yet again we have our lovely President George Dubbya to thank for it.
Newsflash, G. Dub: I would have moved to Switzerland if I wanted THIS much socialism in my life. But thanks for forcing it upon us due to your lack of presidential ability! I appreciate it.
And it sucks because I defended this slip of a president once upon a time. "Oh, he's had a rough presidency...9/11 was pretty unfortunate" and "He's doing the best he can with the current circumstances" and "...well, at least he's not John Kerry!" But honestly? I feel like sometime in 2005 or 2006 G. Dub just lost his focus and stopped caring about the majority of Americans' interests. It seems to me like he forgot that this country was founded on the principles of a democracy and pretty much started making decisions for us (ie. military - "Hey, let's go into Iraq and flush out Sadaam Hussein...even though we're looking for Osama bin Laden...but let's use Hussein as a cover-up victory for not knowing where the fuck Osama is, yayyy!"; education - "No Child Left Behind" Act failed hardcore. Goodbye, millions of dollars put into a shitty education campaign...) without really listening to the people and what we wanted. We may not be the best educated country, and we may not know much, but if there's one thing we do know, it's what we want. And I don't really think we wanted eight years of this. Unfortunately we were deceived by all these politicians and we were stuck with two shitty candidate choices for two elections in a row. We thought we were choosing the lesser of two evils both times, but boy, were we wrong and we have been kicking ourselves for the last eight years.
Ummm...so, how many more days until the inauguration of the new president? I almost don't even care who it is anymore. Hell, I'll even take Ralph Nader at this point. Just get G. Dub out before he causes us more trouble. There are so many things he could mess up in the span of three months, and I don't know if this country will ever recover.
*sigh* I just had my Political Theory class and we talked about our dying economy (which is what triggered this entry) and it was quite depressing. There's this super conservative girl, Maria (who I constantly butt heads with during class discussions), that tried to defend the executive decisions made by the Bush administration and I simply could not sit by and watch her spew the same lies that this administration has fed us. What happened to politics being used to help benefit today's society and its citizens? Aristotle must be rolling in his grave, watching this.
So, in conclusion, I have a message, America: learn not only what changes you want to see in this country but also learn which candidate also sees the same vision you see. You decide which candidate is going to be better at turning this train wreck around. I don't know about you but I love this country too much to watch it go down in flames without trying to do anything about it. So please, VOTEEE.
...[/random public service announcement]
***END POLITICAL RANT***
...one day I will post a non-political rant entry and talk about my real personal life, haha. Sorry, it's just that now that Political Science is one of my majors, I actually have to care about these sorts of things and talk about them. Anyway, so much has been going on in my life (outside of politics, that is), more drama, etc. I will get to it eventually, possibly tomorrow. I feel too world weary to really go into it right now.